That day I drove for ten hours. I zig-zagged across the northern edge of Ohio four times. I spent 35 dollars on tolls, sat in traffic behind an accident, and drove through flooding-condition rain. Oh, and I dropped off my first-born son at college that day. It was a day among days.
We began with a packed car and high hopes, my son and I. A three-hour drive ahead, he took the wheel, and I set about the task of putting the screen protector and case onto the 2-day-old laptop. Hopes were crushed early; the computer would not boot. A windows icon, then a black screen. I quickly googled the fixes, tried the five surefire ways to reboot or restart your system, pressing start buttons and volume buttons together and in fancy sequences. None worked.
As we arrived at the dorm for move-in, the unresponsive computer loomed in my mind. We unpacked, chatted with staff, but finished early and went to the college store that shipped the laptop. Same results–buttons and sequences and a looming black screen. We arrived late to the luncheon where my son ate while I phoned Microsoft Tech support and pushed the same series of buttons to the same unsuccessful end.
Frustration mounting, the choice emerged: I could wait a week for the local store to diagnose, ship, repair and return, or travel two hours away to the retail store for a possible exchange. I hastily hugged my kid (hardly the emotional parting that I had envisioned that morning) and told him I would see him in five hours.
The rain started one hour in–buckets of water on my windshield in single-lane construction with hydroplaning. I called the Microsoft hotline twice to push back my appointment, and finally arrived, dripping, to the mall lobby. The saleswoman met me at the entrance, and I don’t even remember what I said: probably rambling chatter about how I was not going to leave the building without a working computer, and that I had dropped off my kid at college that day. While I imagine myself to be a composed, in-charge, confident customer, I am sure that I was a frazzled mess. She led me to the service area, and asked a simple question that I am sure she was trained to ask: “Would you like a cup of coffee?”
Had I not held onto the last of my composure, I am sure I would have burst into tears.. Instead I said, “My God, yes.” She asked me about how I took it, led me to a chair, and brought me coffee and creamer and a container of sugar, laid the array before me and smiled. In that moment, that cup of coffee, that kindness, that caretaking was world-changing. In a day where I was the mom, I was the computer tech, I was the organizer of college stuff, I was able to take a breath and switch roles. I was no longer responsible for it all, and for an hour, this stranger shouldered my stress in that cup.
And she will probably never know what she did. While it is easy to get cynical about corporate sales pitches and forced hospitality, none of that mattered. Instead, her smile, her kindness mattered. They mattered deeply. And I wonder how often this moment happens. Times where a kind word, a kind gesture, an often-practiced polite gesture can drastically change the trajectory of a person’s day. And how often, in the giving, we don’t even know that it happened.
I’ve come to understand that God calls us to be deliberate, to be intentional about our kindnesses. To practice kindness in our daily life and work–that this is part of the “the work that [God] has given us to do.” Those small gifts that we give one another are truly part of our call to be “faithful witnesses,” even when we may never know that others have seen the face of God in our actions, especially when we don’t know where this intentional kindness may lead another person.
I received another gift that day. Joseph, the Microsoft tech, swapped out the computer without the infuriating series of tests. He simply said, “Give me that glitchy computer. It is Microsoft’s problem now.” He proceeded to spend the extra time setting up my son’s laptop, and I drove back to the university refreshed. Mind you, the drive was grueling, and I was worthless the entire next day, but amid one of my worst days, that coffee was indeed spiritual food.